Congress Stops Funding Commercial Airline Defense Tech

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the federal government was ready to investigate solutions to nearly every terrorist threat to civilian aviation. Nearly 10 years later, there has been a subtle shift away from some high-tech solutions to real but low-probability threats. In the case of shoulder-launched missiles aimed at commercial airliners, the government has changed tactics from gadgetry to policy; the White House and Congress this year quietly stopped funding laser-jamming equipment that could scramble missiles as they track the heat of aircraft.

This threat became distinct in 2002 when Al Qaeda operatives unsuccessfully fired at an Israeli jetliner taking off from Mombasa, Kenya. Later that year, the Bush administration and Congress tasked several agencies to come up with solutions to counter shoulder-fired missiles, called man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS. Eight years and $276 million later, no commercial aircraft have been equipped with the systems. And in 2010, for the first time since the incident in Kenya, Congress and the White House quietly stopped funding civilian MANPADS defenses. "It has dropped off the radar, and that worries me," says Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), one of a small bipartisan group in Congress trying to fund the countermeasures. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that at least 24 terrorist organizations possess MANPADS, most of which have infrared sensors that find the hot engines of airplanes flying up to three miles high. DHS concluded that the best onboard defense use pulses of infrared energy to confuse the missiles' guidance system. In 2002, DHS contracted BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman to develop and test these systems. Both BAE's Jeteye and Northrop Grumman's Guardian systems can defeat multiple missiles, but, according to DHS, both technologies had problems with their reliability and would require more money to fix the shortfalls.

The price of installing defensive equipment in airline fleets seems to have doomed the effort: It would cost $43 billion over 20 years to protect all wide-body and large narrow-body passenger aircraft. With increasing reliability for the technology to counter these antiaircraft missiles, the cost could drop by $10 billion, according to DHS. "The problem is that a lot of my colleagues say the threat does not justify the cost," Israel says. "The day after a successful attack, they will look back and say, 'How did we let this happen?'"

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), who has been working closely with Israel on the issue, says the U.S. has "dropped off the radar" because airlines have been cash-strapped and because there has not been an incident of missiles trying to bring down a U.S. commercial airplane. "It depends on whether there is a threat or an incident. We are very much reactionary," he says. Mica also said that much of the focus in homeland security has shifted to bulking up the numbers of Transportation Security Personnel rather than equipping aircraft with countermeasures.

Experts agree that the risk of an attack is real but note that other solutions exist. "MANPADS are still a big threat," says Matt Schroeder, the manager of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists. "The nightmare scenario I am thinking of would be the acquisition of newer, more accurate and more capable, [missile] systems by a group like an Al Qaeda that can plan attacks at multiple airports worldwide."

But he argues that Congress has consistently increased funding for what he considers the most important counter-MANPADS program: a State Department initiative that works with foreign governments to secure MANPADS stockpiles and destroy surplus. For fiscal year 2011, the State Department has rolled its activities to secure loose MANPADS and other small arms under its conventional-weapons destruction program. (The program also deals with land mines, unexploded ordnance and other small arms.) The funding Congress approved for State's Small Arms/Light Weapons Destruction Fund gradually increased from $3 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2010. The State Department is requesting $146 million for that program in 2011 but did not break down how much of that money would secure the shoulder-fired missiles.

"To date, this program has helped foreign governments to destroy more than 30,000 surplus, obsolete and poorly secured MANPADS and improved security over thousands more," he says. However, China and Iran produce their own types of MANPADS, and both countries sell to questionable recipients, according to Schroeder. Chinese missiles have been reported in guerrillas' hands in Africa, and Iran's contacts with terrorist and insurgent groups are causing proliferation concerns. "The United States has taken many commendable steps," he says. "But loose missiles are still out there."

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